PANAJI
Panaj police have registered a first information report (FIR) against unknown persons based on a complaint filed by the Forest Department pertaining to a missing file on tiger reserve case.
Sources confirmed that the Deputy Conservator of Forest, North (wildlife) had filed a missing file complaint with Panaji police, based on which an FIR has been registered.
Interestingly, the department did not undertake any inter-departmental inquiry into the entire episode. The complaint was filed only after the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee (CEC) issued directions to the Forest Department.
During its first hearing on September 16, the petitioner Goa Foundation made a written submission that the tiger proposal was finalized by the State Forest Department in 2018 and that the files pertaining to it are missing.
Foundation director Claude Alvares informed CEC that the document indicated that all the major settlements had been scrupulously excluded from the boundary of the tiger reserve. He informed the CEC that the file dealing with the tiger reserve with the Government had disappeared, hence he could not produce all the annexures listed in the Forest Department’s tiger proposal.
During the hearing, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) admitted that the tiger proposal file could no longer be found.
Accordingly, the CEC asked the PCCF whether an FIR had been filed and if not the same be filed.
